Monday, 3 January 2011

Tim Tyler - Cultural Evolution

The book is probably going to be called "Memetics". However, the main topic is going to be cultural evolution, rather than cultural genetics (memetics).

This cover is based on one of the diagrams from the book - illustrating cultural evolution using the classic example of knots.

Anthropologsts have long been aware that artefacts bear resemblances to each other that are suggestive of phylogenetic trees.

However, the idea works imperfectly - and it is not usually possible to construct phylogenetic trees of artefacts. This appears to have led to the approach being rather neglected - since it was evidently an inaccurate model of what was happening.